Using a dual-frame design to improve phone surveys on political attitudes: developing a weighting strategy for limited external information in Hong Kong

Quality & Quantity - In recent years, rapid increases in mobile phone ownership and decreases in landline users have led to potential biases in landline phone survey estimations. Mobile-only...     

Contagion or Inductance? Crisis 1997 Reconsidered

We provide the simple example of a refinancing game with incomplete information, where the lack of transparency is both necessary and sufficient for the propagation of local financial distress across disjoint financial networks. JEL Classification Number: F4.
And the truth shall make you free. John 8: 32     

A Conceptual Model of the Household's Housing Decision–Making Process: The Economic Perspective

At some stage in every household's family life cycle, the household is likely to make certain decisions with regard to its housing environment. Although the household's housing decisions essentially comprise the decision to move, and the selection of a new residence, the process from which these decisions are derived is very complex because varying circumstances could produce a multitude of different housing decisions. Due to the sheer complexity of the household's housing decision–making process, researchers have generally focused on individual decision–making stages rather than on the process as a whole. This paper therefore attempts to conceptualize the entire household housing decision–making process using theoretical concepts from the economic perspective, and then tests the conceptual model with empirical evidence drawn from the moving population within the multi–racial society in Singapore.     

Self‐Fulfilling Early‐Contracting Rush*

In markets for entry‐level professionals, the insurance motive drives some participants to sign early contracts. The rush to early contracting can be self‐fulfilling, as both its effect on expectations about demand–supply balance in the subsequent spot market and the effect on it from changes in the demand–supply balance can be nonmonotone. Matching markets with more risk‐averse participants, a greater uncertainty regarding relative supply of positions, or a more polarized distribution of applicant qualities are more vulnerable to self‐fulfilling early‐contracting rushes. Employers can have a collective interest in preventing early offers to a few promising applicants from starting the rushes.     

The economics of shortage and problems of reform in Chinese industry

This paper employs the economics of shortage framework to examine post-Mao reforms in Chinese state-owned industry. Performance has been disappointing because reforms through 1985 failed to fundamentally alter economic agent behavior. The “soft” budget constraints at the enterprise and local government levels continue to generate “quantity” and “expansion” drives. The resultant inflationary pressures have necessitated administrative interventions and thwarted reform progress. The Maoist legacy of active participation by local governments in economic management is high-lighted as a major obstacle to the elimination of paternalism in state-enterprise relations.     

Real Investment Implications of Employee Stock Option Exercises

This paper examines a real cost of awarding employee stock options. Based on the observation that managers are extremely concerned about earnings-per-share dilution in equity related compensation, we predict and find that firms experiencing significant employee stock option (ESO) exercises shift resources away from real investments towards the repurchase of their own stocks. We further find weak evidence of a decline in subsequent firm performance (as measured by return on assets) for several years following the cut in discretionary investments as a result of stock option exercises, though this result is sensitive to the metric used to measure performance. Collectively, our findings indicate that ESO exercises potentially impose a real cost on the firm in terms of foregone investment opportunities.     

The efficiency of decomposition vs direct solution with implications for the question of decentralized or centralized planning

Conclusion The investigation provides overwhelming evidence that decomposition tends to become increasingly more efficient than direct solution as the number of subproblems becomes greater.Further investigation would be required to obtain a comparable picture of the behaviour of decomposition with respect to an increasing number of variables in the master problem as their range of variation in the present study is rather restricted.It is gratefully acknowledged: that in implementing the decompositional procedure on the computer I have benefitted from Mr. A. C. McKay's advice on matters relating to the computer programmes; also that I enjoyed the pleasant and friendly co-operation of the staff of the computer Centre, University of Birmingham, without which the difficulties involved in carrying out the present task would have been compounded manifold; that Dr. C.-L. Sandblom carefully studied this paper and suggested a number of valuable improvements. Finally, I should like to thank Professor Kronsjö for the encouragement that he has given to me in executing this project and to the research council which made this investigation possible.     

A curtailed test for the shape parameter of the Weibull distribution

Summary A procedure is proposed in this paper for testing the shape parameter, of the Weibull distribution. The test statistic which is based on the extremal quotient, possesses a monotone property which makes it possible for rejection earlier than the last planned observation of the null hypothesis,H ₀: =₀ when the alternative hypothesis isH _a: <₀ and early acceptance ofH ₀ whenH _a: >₀. The test being scale-free, does not require the scale parameter to be known.